Five Moral Pieces
Five Moral Pieces

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2002-10-01

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 0547564058

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In this prescient essay collection, the acclaimed author of Foucault’s Pendulum examines the cultural trends and perils at the dawn of the 21st century. In the last decade of the 20th century, Umberto Eco saw an urgent need to embrace tolerance and multiculturalism in the face of our world’s ever-increasing interconnectivity. At a talk delivered during the first Gulf War, he points out the absurdity of armed conflict in a globalized economy where the flow of information is unstoppable and the enemy is always behind the lines. Elsewhere, he questions the influence of the news media and identifies its contribution to our collective disillusionment with politics. In a deeply personal essay, Eco recalls his boyhood experience of Italy’s liberation from fascism. He then analyzes the universal elements of fascism, including the “cult of tradition” and a “suspicion of intellectual life.” And finally, in an open letter to an Italian cardinal, Eco reflects on a question underlying all the reflections in the book: What does it mean to be moral or ethical when one doesn't believe in God? “At just 111 pages, Five Moral Pieces packs a philosophical wallop surprising in such a slender book. Or maybe not so surprising. Eco's prose here is beautiful.”—January Magazine

Chronicles of a Liquid Society
Chronicles of a Liquid Society

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2017-11-14

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0544974573

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The acclaimed author examines our contemporary world—from technology to politics and pop culture—in this collection of essays written for L’Espresso. Umberto Eco was an international cultural superstar. In this, his last collection, the celebrated essayist and novelist observes the changing world around him with irrepressible curiosity and philosophical insight. He illuminates the contemporary upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives—creating a “liquid” society that defies any organizing principle. In these pieces, written for his regular column in the Italian magazine L’Espresso, Eco brings his dazzling erudition and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, mass media, racism, and good manners. It is “a swan song from one of Europe’s great intellectuals…[Eco] entertains with his intellect, humor, and insatiable curiosity” (Kirkus Reviews). “An intelligent, intriguing, and often hilariously incisive set of observations on contemporary follies and changing mores.” —Publishers Weekly

How to Travel with a Salmon
How to Travel with a Salmon

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: HMH

Published: 1995-09-15

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0547540434

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“Impishly witty and ingeniously irreverent” essays on topics from cell phones to librarians, by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (The Atlantic Monthly). A cosmopolitan curmudgeon the Los Angeles Times called “the Andy Rooney of academia”—known for both nonfiction and novels that have become blockbuster New York Times bestsellers—Umberto Eco takes readers on “a delightful romp through the absurdities of modern life” (Publishers Weekly) as he journeys around the world and into his own wildly adventurous mind. From the mundane details of getting around on Amtrak or in the back of a cab, to reflections on computer jargon and soccer fans, to more important issues like the effects of mass media and consumer civilization—not to mention the challenges of trying to refrigerate an expensive piece of fish at an English hotel—this renowned writer, semiotician, and philosopher provides “an uncanny combination of the profound and the profane” (San Francisco Chronicle). “Eco entertains with his clever reflections and with his unique persona.” —Kirkus Reviews Translated from the Italian by William Weaver

Travels in Hyperreality
Travels in Hyperreality

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0547545967

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A “scintillating collection” of essays on Disneyland, medieval times, and much more, from the author of Foucault’s Pendulum (Los Angeles Times). Collected here are some of Umberto Eco’s finest popular essays, recording the incisive and surprisingly entertaining observations of his restless intellectual mind. As the author puts it in the preface to the second edition: “In these pages, I try to interpret and to help others interpret some ‘signs.’ These signs are not only words, or images; they can also be forms of social behavior, political acts, artificial landscapes.” From Disneyland to holography and wax museums, Eco explores America’s obsession with artificial reality, suggesting that the craft of forgery has in certain cases exceeded reality itself. He examines Western culture’s enduring fascination with the middle ages, proposing that our most pressing modern concerns began in that time. He delves into an array of topics, from sports to media to what he calls the crisis of reason. Throughout these travels—both physical and mental—Eco displays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Translated by William Weaver

Misreadings
Misreadings

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780156607520

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Playful parodies by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Here, Eco pokes fun at the oversophisticated, overacademic, and overintellectual, and along the way makes penetrating comments about our modern mass culture and the elitist avant-garde in art in criticism.

From Shakespeare to Obama
From Shakespeare to Obama

Author: J. Hart

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-12-17

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1137375825

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From Shakespeare to Obama discusses language, slavery, and place from the Portuguese enslavement of African people, through slavery in Shakespeare's plays, to President Obama's 2012 speech on "modern slavery." Balancing close reading with context, this expansive book offers new insight into questions of otherness, rhetoric, and stereotyping.

Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture
Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture

Author: Douglass Merrell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-06-05

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 3319547895

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This book provides a philosophical overview of Umberto Eco's historical and cultural development as a unique, internationally recognized public intellectual who communicates his ideas to both an academic and a popular audience. It describes Eco’s intellectual development from his childhood during World War II and student involvement as a Catholic youth activist and scholar of the Middle Ages, to his early writings on the "openness" of modern works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Merrell also explores Eco’s pioneering role in semiotics and his later career as a novelist.

Italian Literature since 1900 in English Translation 1929-2016
Italian Literature since 1900 in English Translation 1929-2016

Author: Robin Healey

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2019-03-07

Total Pages: 1104

ISBN-13: 1487502923

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Providing the most complete record possible of texts by Italian writers active after 1900, this annotated bibliography covers over 4,800 distinct editions of writings by some 1,700 Italian authors. Many entries are accompanied by useful notes that provide information on the authors, works, translators, and the reception of the translations. This book includes the works of Pirandello, Calvino, Eco, and more recently, Andrea Camilleri and Valerio Manfredi. Together with Robin Healey's Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation, also published by University of Toronto Press in 2011, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations from Italian accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature.

Morality of the Past from the Present Perspective
Morality of the Past from the Present Perspective

Author: Vasil Gluchman

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1443807974

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The monograph is divided into four parts. The work starts with Preface in which Vasil Gluchman presents socio-political, socio-cultural and ideological context of the first half of the twentieth century and the situation in Slovakia (and Central Europe) in this historical period, placing this monograph and the works of individual contributors into the context of the given era. The first part deals with philosophical and ethical issues arising from the examination of morality at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This part creates the methodological starting point for the examinations presented in the next three parts of the monograph. The second part focuses on the development of philosophical and ethical reflection of morality in Slovakia in the given era. The third part examines socio-political and professional-ethical aspects of the development and functioning of morality in Slovakia in the first half of the 20th century. Reflections of morality in Slovakia in the Slovak literature of the first half of the 20th century are the object of interest in the fourth part of the monograph.